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Jordan Rift Valley
Jordan Rift Valley
Northern section of the Great Rift Valley. The Sinai Peninsula is in center and the Dead Sea and Jordan River valley above
A 2003 satellite image of the region showing the Jordan Rift Valley
Demography
The Jordanian population of the valley is over 85,000 people, most of whom are farmers, and 80% of the farms in the Jordanian part of the valley are family farms no larger than 30 dunams (3 ha, 7.4 ac). Some 47,000 Palestinians live in the part of the valley that lies in the West Bank in about twenty permanent communities, most of them reside in the city of Jericho. Thousands of Bedouins also live in temporary communities.[citation needed] About 11,000 Israelis live in 17 kibbutzim that form part of the Emek HaYarden Regional Council in Israel,[6] while an additional 7,500 live in twenty-six Israeli settlements and five Nahal encampments that have been established in the part of the Jordan Valley that lies in the West Bank.[citation needed] Prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, the valley's Jordanian side was home to about 60,000 people largely engaged in agriculture and pastoralism. By 1971, the population had declined to 5,000 as a result of the war and the 1970-71 conflict between the Palestinian guerrillas and the Jordanian armed forces. Investments by the Jordanian government in the region allowed the population to rebound to over 85,000 by 1979.
Since the end of the 1967 war, every Israeli government has considered the western Jordan Valley to be the eastern border of Israel with Jordan. The 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan defines the international border between the countries on the Jordan river in the center of the Jordan valley.
Agriculture
The Jordan River rises from several sources, mainly the Anti-Lebanon Mountains in Syria. It flows down into the Sea of Galilee, 212 meters below sea level, and then drains into the Dead Sea. South of the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley turns into the hot, dry Arabah valley. The Jordan Valley is several degrees warmer than adjacent areas, and its year-round agricultural climate, fertile soils and water supply made it a site for agriculture dating to about 10,000 years ago. By about 3000 BCE, produce from the valley was being exported to neighboring regions. In the last few decades, modern methods of farming have vastly expanded the agricultural output of the area. The construction of the East Ghor Canal by Jordan in 1950s (now known as the King Abdullah Canal), which runs down the east bank of the Jordan Valley for 69 kilometers, has brought new areas under irrigation. The introduction of portable greenhouses has brought about a sevenfold increase in productivity, allowing Jordan to export large amounts of fruit and vegetables year-round.
Tourism
The area's fertile lands were chronicled in the Hebrew Bible, where it was the site of several miracles for the people of Israel, such as the Jordan River stopping its flow to allow the Jewish people, led by the Ark of the Covenant, to pass over. The Jordan River is revered by Christians as the place where John the Baptist baptized Jesus Christ.
References
[1] The Jordan Rift Valley (http:/ / www. tau. ac. il/ ~archpubs/ projects/ horjordanriftvalley. html), Tel Aviv University [2] The Geophysical Institute (http:/ / www. gii. co. il/ html/ ground/ GravityNew/ DeadSeaStudy. html#) [3] e.g. Freund et al., 1970, The Shear along the Dead Sea Rift, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences Vol. 267, No. 1181 and Joffe and Garfunkel, 1987, Plate Kinematics of the Circum Red-Sea - A Reevaluation, Tectonophysics v. 141 (1-3): 5-22 [4] Horowitz, Aharon, The Jordan Rift Valley, Taylor & Francis, 2001 ISBN 978-90-5809-351-6 [5] Mart, Y., 1994, The Dead Sea rift, a leaky transform fault or an oblique spreading center: a short review, Africa Geosci. Rev. 1, 567578 [6] About Emek Hayarden R.C. (http:/ / bohabayta. com/ meshakim/ RC_Emek_Hayarden/ default_eng. asp)
Coordinates: 321902N 353412E (http:/ / tools. wmflabs. org/ geohack/ php?pagename=Jordan_Rift_Valley¶ms=32_19_02_N_35_34_12_E_source:kolossus-frwiki) Media related to Jordan Rift Valley at Wikimedia Commons
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